Enlightenment Through Understanding

Thoughts on France

Not so sure about this. It’s not like everyone is armed and clairvoyant of an impending attack, especially not attendees of a concert. Terrorists, after all, have the advantage of striking first. If someone parks a car full of explosives and detonates it, how will guns stop that? Or someone wearing a suicide vest? Islamic terrorism can’t be thwarted with the same methods you would use to thwart, say, a burglar or a blank robber.

A commenter on Free Republic shares a similar sentiment:

I have carried for over 20 years and there is no doubt a firearm can be used to minimize a mass shooting or idiot with a knife, but look at the history of Israel. The most effective attacks have generally involved explosives and they are the hardest to stop.

Again, denying jihad Johnny access to the target via immigration is the most foolproof way of preventing this. I don’t take anything away from the 2nd Amendment, but our focus must be on defensive immigration policies.

Another problem is psychology – when ambushed by automatic weapons, I imagine the natural response for most people is to flee, not shoot back. Hypothetically, if some people in the concert were armed and had the bravery to not flee, they could have gotten some shots in, but this makes a lot of generous assumptions.

Terrorists and spree shooters target masses of people, with no respect for their own lives or the lives of others, whereas robbers want loot. In the former, it makes the situation much more deadly and unpredictable. I can’t even begin to conceptualize, beyond fear, what would go through someone’s mind in such an event.

The solution is better security, which includes racial profiling and immigration restrictions. I support the right to carry, but let’s not pretend it’s a panacea for Islamic terrorism.

America has a much smaller Muslim population percentage-wise than France (1% vs. 5-10%), but that didn’t stop 911.

Why didn’t the Islamist terrorist attacks occur in a Muslim-free place like Poland?

Maybe security. France may have been an easier target. I don’t think Muslim terrorists care how many other Muslims live there (after all, Muslims commit terror against other Muslims); they care more about visibility (media coverage after attack) and probability of success.

One reason why France (and much of Europe) is susceptible to Islamic terrorism is because, unlike America, there are no natural geographic barriers with the Middle East. Also because of its culture that goes back many centuries – France is like a global hub that attracts both the good and bad, whereas other countries tend to be more insular and less eclectic. France was the intellectual breeding ground for most despots of the last century, many of whom such as Solath Sar (Pol Pot) studied there and returned to their home countries to apply those teachings with not so nice results.

Other examples of stupidity, those who say this is France’s ’911′, what happens if there is a worse attack, which would not shock me given Europe’s emasculated leadership. Does that become the new ’911′?